My latest journey to Timor-Leste (East Timor) began on 16 October, the 40th anniversary of the murder of five Australian-based journalists in Balibo by Indonesian special forces. My first trip there was in March 1975, six months prior to their deaths.

Could you explain to me this custom?” We had spent three days with our Turkish colleague, and by our final evening together in Çanakkale, on the eastern shore of the Dardanelles strait, the conversation had become more expansive. “Why do Australians insert newspaper into their backsides and set fire to it as they leap into the sea?”

From David Corn

On Friday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks, a mild conservative, and I were on the PBS Newshour, and our discussion of Cruz's recent surge in Iowa really ticked off some within the right-wing press. Here are a few headlines:

US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to roll-back the power of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.

One of the unstated goals of imperial warfare is to make hapless civilians pay a price for having the temerity to be born in a targeted nation.

It ain’t easy being a libertarian anti-war activist. No one trusts your motives and the scene is rife with assumption: If on the left, the heart bleeds for humanity, libertarians want to make sure no one drops blood on behalf of the state. One is selfless, while the other is selfish. Or so the metaphors go.

This is the last chapter of "The Age of Deceit" by Gus Leonisky. This is by no mean the end of the age of deceit on planet earth. 

It was rather amusing as it was a complete mass of epigrams, with occasional whiffs of grotesque melodrama and drivelling sentiment. The queerest mixture! Mr Tree is a wicked Lord, staying at a country house, who has made up his mind to bugger one of the other guests — a handsome young man of twenty. The handsome young man is delighted; when his mother enters, sees his Lordship and recognises him as having copulated with her twenty years before, the result of which was — the hansome young man ... It seems an odd plot, doesn't it?

The Australian Tax Office released the Corporate Tax Transparency Report in December. It tells us which big businesses didn’t pay any income tax. On top of that it tells us those companies who did but at rates well below the statutory rate of 30 per cent.

One hundred years after women like Emmeline Pankhurst fought for women's equality, men cannot fully grasp women's inclusion in the professional world, writes Paul Donoughue.

Peter Dutton is, to use his own words, more or less, a mad fucking wanker.

Senior Cabinet minister Peter Dutton has been caught up in the continuing Jamie Briggs scandal, after mistakenly sending an offensive text message to a journalist who was covering the story.

When I read your report that  the Baird government had sold the Education Department building and the Lands Department building for $35 million, I checked the date, thinking that it must have been April 1 ("Baird's $3b sell-off", January 2-3). Each of those buildings occupies a complete block in  one of the most prestigious parts of the CBD.  Were competitive bids sought before this unbelievable price from a Singaporean hotel developer was accepted? 

On this scale of values the government no doubt will consider selling the Opera House for $1 million and the Sydney Harbour Bridge for, oh say, $50,000.